Heritage
by MasterPassionCreed
Summary: With every inch of her shaking, she chooses it's time to run away. - Post T


_Heritage_

Under her pile of blankets, Maya feels colder than the snow.  
The boiling tea couldn't do the trick – nothing is enough, not even Pearl's warm breath tickling her ears. The fever may have been gone for days; her nightmares aren't, and the mask of serenity she has built crumbles a little more every day.  
Kurain is peaceful. Under her futon alone, in the square of her fragile bones, the ground is falling apart.  
Spiritual energy cuts through her in pieces, just like the rain when it's cruel and it drops sharp blades on your sorrow. She has tried hard not to listen to it, in spite of her training, in spite of the messages from afterlife, caught and unread in her sleep.  
None of her efforts has been useful – it just comes back to her. It's her blood.  
Her blood is weighing like molten lead in her veins. She opens a pair of scared eyes and sees the faces of her ancestors in the night; they are the distant clouds of the storm that has just passed, and still they ask for her whole being, with a thirst – of blood? – their daughters could never satisfy.  
She blinks, and the silhouettes are there and gone at the same time. Those ghosts that have nothing to do with her; nothing to do with whatever she will wish for herself, whether it is to tread on their path or to break the red string tight on their fingers, death after death, woman after woman.  
She tears away her gaze from the moon.  
With every inch of her shaking, she chooses it's time to run away.

Maya cannot decide whose eyes are the most hopeless.  
Pearl is too small to keep such a responsibility inside that little body of hers, and when she sees her suitcase filled in secret is ready she doesn't even have tears left to cry.  
But Maya is the only Master left by now – she has to know which threads can or cannot be pulled in the net of this deadly family. As long as she lives, her little cousin won't see a glimpse of blood.  
She explains how promises mean nothing to her – there must only be certainties, especially from those who are older than you. She wipes her cheeks with pale thumbs, almost hating herself and her words.  
But those were the best things she could figure out of that mess – she cannot lose confidence in what she feels, not when half of her world needs her alive, and the other half wants her to be happy. She makes her see how she will have to return soon, how she could never let it go.  
Maya is a Fey, and a Fey can never forget.  
She hugs her tight, asking her to be brave for the last time.

Maya found an open door and a silence she had long sought after.  
Phoenix would never have asked her why. When he came to open, there in the doorstep, his eyes told her he had been expecting it from the first moment – a surprised mention of well, I thought it'd be much sooner, was all he had to add to a cup of hot chocolate and a whole evening in his arms.  
Her today and her yesterday here and are parted by just a little time, but all the difference in the world stands between them. She tries not to be much of a bother; she watches much, and prefers silence whenever she comes up with anything annoying to tell him. On second thought, he is probably worried about this – but at least five years more of wisdom have been slammed in her face in a few hours, and she can see that there will be plenty of time to joke. This is a time of growth and of observation; for her, as well as for all the people in her life.  
To this day, his steps are so sure in the hardships of his job that you would never believe what he has gone through; she listens to his tales and smiles deep in her hamburger, while on the other side of the phone, quieter every day, Pearl grows to be the greatest hero she has ever met in her life.  
You would never tell that fourteen days of peace can make the world so much lighter.  
Now she faces a lonely window, sleepless in the quiet of her room, and looks at the same sky she dug in from the mountains. The city neons make everything dimmer – but the black night above is sprinkled in white dots, which the icy air makes sharper and brighter.  
They say the winter, although cold, has the best skies.  
She takes a deep breath and, for the first time, she bursts in tears under those watchful constellations.  
The weight of hundreds of ghosts falls from her shoulders.

* * *

Poor Maya needs more love and more hugs.  
Come on, friends, none of us thought she stood a single chance when she said she wanted to be strong for Pearl and for the others - a breakdown was due to say the least. And for me, in that very second, writing about it became a purpose to be fulfilled.  
Here it is, almost two years late.


End file.
